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I'm using a couple of pairs of Atlas Navigator balanced cables (yes i know they aren't speaker cables) in this system & i'm very happy with with the results :)
I have a question though, what's this about balanced speaker cables? :scratch: Things are only balanced if the amplifier happens to be, IE it's a bridged output in which case nothing is truly grounded.
Am i missing something? :cool:
I have a ATC SCA2 preamp with balanced speaker output into my fully active ATC speakers.
Ah, gotcha, so what you have aren't exactly normal speaker cables carrying real current :) Like me you run an active system but yours is balanced from the pre to the xover & power amps in the speakers :cool:
Now with you 100%, i'd have called them interconnects though, not speaker cables as they are only line level. That is where the confusion set in :eyebrows:
So basically my SPM reference cable would be $hit in my current system and I'm better of producing some interconnects!?! :scratch: Well, I think I;m gonna order some silver cabling from fleabay and see what I can produce. This is of course dependent upon price.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reid Malenfant
The world is your oyster in this case :) You'll have shed loads of different balanced cable to choose from in reality. I use stuff from Maplin thats very good, but on ebay you'll find all sorts. You might take a look at some of the Van Damme balanced microphone cable which i believe Dave DSJR rates highly.
Just make sure you get decent plugs, Neutrik black type with gold plated pins i rate highly ;) But you can go mad if you like & pay £50+ for each plug, with you needing 4 you might want to give that idea a miss :D
Don't forget you'll need two female & two male plugs ;)
WARNING LONG POST ;) SORRY FOR TYPO'S
WHY BOTHER WRITING SUCH AN ARTICLE??
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Well I wrote this to help save money! Its very easy to spend £1000's on Hi-Fi, I've done it and regretted it. This little article is my diary of how
I upgraded my Technics 1210. As I went through this journey I learned not to be frustrated with my tinkering and found that a negative, fruitless
experience was actually a very positive thing in learning how my system worked, a lesson learned on what not to do again if you like! I atually began toenjoy the tweaking and I learned to enjoy intelligent tweaking, only spending money where money needs to be spent and using your head to find a solution to a problem. Tweaking is not for the impatient I also wrote this article as a diary for myself so I can look back and see where and how my system evolved and also as a resource to save time for if I ever need to re-house my system.
LET THE JOURNEY BEGIN.........................
The SME v Rewire and Service - COST £339
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Got the V back today from Audio OrigamI and at £339 you may think that this was an expensive service but boy what a result! To complete the picture
I had teflon coated 99.99% pure silver (ok its not the best!!) intrinsic cabling replacing the old SME copper stuff. I replaced the SME copper cartridge
tags with Kondo pure silver tags.The cartridge tags were then directly soldered onto the tonearm wire, SME usually terminate the tonearm arm wiring into a circular piece of metal which sits under the headshell of the tonearm, cartridge tags then come away from this and then insert into the cartridge via a seperate set of cartridge tag wires.
By using my method we got rid of a whole level of cable termination I took my inspiration from the Michell technoarm which has a continous unbroken run of silver cabling from the cartridge tag to the RCA plugs. This is something that you can do with a V but I was advised against it due to the fact I have the TYR tonearm cable. Its one level of cabeling that could have been removed but had to stay.I had the tonearm dampened even further with having foam inserted into its shaft. The V's bearings were checked and found to be in perfect condition and the silicone dampening was also found to be normal. I had my Nordost TYR tonarm cable terminated with Eichmann silver bullets, and that concluded the tweaks. I have had several hours listening to it so far and can report that several things have happened. Soundstage has improved further, micro-detail pickup has been
increased, vocally artists appear more intimate, and sibilance has been decreased as well. The edge of notes appear to be better defined, this is something I could never quite picture but now I see what people mean by this statement. I'd even say that there was a little extra space between instruments. I can see further the mix of a record and there have been several occasions where I can hear artists talking to each other in-between tracks just before they start playing.
The Adjust+ Experience - COST £???
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Whilst setting up the V I tried various combinations with height of the tonearm, cartridge overhang, tracking force, anti-skate etc etc. I own the Audio Tehcnica AT-OC9ML/II which is a firecracker of a cartridge. It's lively, punchy, and very forensic but it sounds shit if its not properly aligned. This
actually highlighted how extremely important it is to get your cartridge lined up. I tried adjusting the cartridge manually and it sounded pretty good but
I then used the Adjust+ protractor to align the cartridge. I choose the baerwold protractor to align the V and the cartridge. $hit what a difference.
Janis Joplin sounded 6ft away in a recording booth whilst previously fish from Marillion and Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden sounded right at the back
of the mix. The soundstage prior to alignment was cohesive but post alignment it was super-tight, i'm talking superglue tight! The whole thing sounded wide, cohesive, I could see right into the Pearl recording. The timbral qualities of acoustic guitars was suddenly improved and the decay of notes suddenly lasted longer. One of the nice things about these little upgrades is that old records suddenly sound "new" simply because I'm hearing things that I hadn't previously heard. Some of these things are going to sound a little petty, but, for instance I heard fresh twangs to Steve Harris bass in Rime of The Ancient Mariner I heard some whispers that I had never ever heard in Script for a Jesters Tear an album that I must heard several thousand times (this is a conservative estimate). Where the hell had they been hiding all these years??
Fill Your Speaker Stands!! - COST £2
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My old Atacama speaker stands weighed in at about 7.5Kg or roughly 15lb's in old money. Being tight and not wanting to spend out on lead shot ot Atabites I decided to buy some Kiln dried sand from the local DIY superstore for £3.95, I needed some anyway for my drive as it has been snowing over the last few days. I duly filled both speaker stands to the top, let things settle, patted things down and then started to listen. I was rewarded with a deeper more tuneful bass. BEWARE this can produce too much speaker bloom which may enswamp smaller listening rooms. You can tune the effect of the bass driver by changing the amount of sand you put in your speaker stands. I only used 1/2 a bag, hence it cost me 2 quid!! Other materials can be used, I've heard of people using concrete or lead shot it's all dependent upon your wallet size. My speaker stands afterwards weight 15kg's or roughly 30lb's in weight which meant they could be easily moved.
Clean Connections - COST £3-4 approximately
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This is a procedure that i do at least once a year where I clean every connection that I can find. You can buy 100 cotton buds for £1 at your local
pound store if your lucky to have one locally whilst I use surgical spirit as my agent of choice for cleaning RCA plugs, speaker plug terminals etc.
More expensive solutions can be used but i dont think there is much, sonically, difference bewteen cheap and cheerful and stupidly expensive.
This job is a real pain in the posterior but when you see the dirt and grime after you've finished you'll realise that it was worth the effort.
I've noticed a clearer soundstage after this has been done. This may be purely psychological but I remember that I did a similar procedure with my old
Quad gear and the effects were similar to an upgrade of speaker cable. Not the most stunning of differences but one where you know your time hasn't
been wasted.
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**THE FREE UPGRADES**
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Learn Whats Normal to Diagnose Abnormal - COST ** NOTHING **
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I learned this from a consultant Radiologist whilst I was learning to read X-rays and I think that never a truer word was spoken. Every audiophile looks
for "that" sound which to them is there idea of Nirvana. This "sound" is going to be different from one audiophile to the next. I have spent considerable
time just listening to my system and learning how it sounds. This is especially important when evaluating upgrades. My advice is learn your system insideout. This way you will know if an item has made a positive or negative impact on your system. I would also recommend getting a few "reference" records which show various aspects of how your system performs.
I have a few favourites over many genres of music. I like to use track 1 on side b of Andrew Lloyd Webbers Variations. This track can produce a massive wash of sonics with synth's, bass, brass, electric guitar thrown at you all at once. I use this track to see how far apart the instruments are, I can also judge how the deck handles multiple instruments and study things like the decay of notes, time signatures etc. If you carry on to track 2 on side 2 you'll get some great Cello playing from Julian LLoyd Webber this is a record which has everything, and it's usually a junk shop favourite, I've picked up two copies for 99p!! The second record i like to use is an old copy of Bach's Tocatto and Fugue in B Minor simply to see how far down the bass responds, again another junk shop find for 20p, I'm sure there are records which could go lower in the bass department but it suffices for my needs. A third record I use is Slayer's Reign in Blood, this is great for testing out Bass drum and screaming vocals. If I want something smooth I have some great Miles Davis, this list goes on. I have also found that using Mono records and extremely knackered records very useful. I use the Mono records to test the width of the soundstage whilst I use knackered records to see if my system likes or dislikes poor or bad recordings.
I have found I can describe my system which is something I couldn't do prior to embarking on these tweaks. It's very very clinical, it hates
crap recorded music, it hates knackered records, it does not suffer fools glady. It can paint an extremely immersive picture of music, it does not
struggle with complicated time signtaures of "busy" pieces of music. Bass is very deep and a little bloomy (something which I'm working on), its taught,
lean and in places it'll kick your arse. The soundstage can be centrally, narrow and pinpointed straight in-between my speakers or it can be wide,
this is dependent upon the recording. I have found space between instruments and I could if I wished just concentrate on a single instrument whilst blanking out others. I can see deeper into a record and hear things that would be previouly hidden away in the record grooves. Simbilance has been reduced but sometimes still creeps in. Accoustic / Heavy metal / thrash / prog / 80's / synth / jazz all sound **GREAT** as for other genre's I have no idea simply because I dont have any great volume of these Genre's. I do have a couple of classical album's, Nigel Kennedy's 4 seasons is another reference record I use and it sounds stunning. Notes decay for longer, timbral qualities of instruments can be better discerned, vocalists can sound very intimate whilst previously they could sound at the back of a mix or simply "muted". My system does have some thing which drive me mad. I can sometimes hear a rumble whilst the records are playing, simbilance is another problem, surface noise is another. The list could go on..............
Sorbothane - COST ** NOTHING **
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Many readers of AOS will have probably have heard about my exploits with Sorbothane. I work with the stuff so i get it for free and I experiment
with off-cuts. You can buy Sorbothane cheaply enough if you want to experiment. I used to have my 1210 sitting on four 6mm circular
pieces of Sorbothane, note the word "USED". My logic was simple in that this should de-couple the deck even further from my Quadraspire rack and provide further dampening and level the deck out. It actually started to rob the 1210's punch and clinical, scalpal like incision qualities. This tweak is
probably good is you dont like things quite so edgy or dont like a super clinical approach to your system. I did however use sorbothane under my
phonostage and pre-amp, and thigs DID improve. So my advice is dont dampen down the 1210 with Sorbothane let the 1210's feet terminate onto your equipment rack and let it do the dampening. I'm still not quite sure "how" the sound improved with Sorbothane under the other components of my system but I just preferred the sound that I heard so now I leave the sorbothane under these components as part of my system.
Rack Configuration - COST ** NOTHING **
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This can have a large impact in that feedback can occur in the form of a hum which can be heard over your speakers. This usually happens when you
havent properly grounded your 1210 or when a phonostage or external powerpack are too close to the 1210. I also own a Trichord Diablo
phonostage, its terrible for feedback hum and has to be as widely seperated as possible from its external powerpack. This feedback will be fed into your
system and I've found that this increases the noise floor. This can be recognised as a hiss in bewteen tracks or in bewteen instruments during a solo for example. Your 1210 should be silent when switched on with no "humming" in the background if you can hear a hum there is an issue somewhere. I keep my TimeStep HE powerpack on the very lowest rack of my Quadraspire rack whilst the 1210 sits at the top, my Pre-amp lives of the
2nd rack and the phonostage lives on the 3rd rack. I've tried to keep the phonostage away from the 1210 but my Valhalla interconects are only 0.5m long, this is mainly due to the fact they were stupidly expensive but also the runs of cable should be kept as short as possible. My CD player a Marantz CD63SE sits on the 3rd rack and finally my Isotek system sits on the very bottom rack. My system is silent when switched on. All components which are not being used are switched off this is mainly my CD player. You may find that altering your rack position has no effect on your system at all but until you try you'll never know. As mentioned my main benefit was a super quite noise floor.
Seat Adjustment - COST ** NOTHING **
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Yep this is going to sound silly but I pulled the chair in by about an additional 12 inches and suddenly things started to sound even better! Again this
is dependent upon experimenting. There are actually web-resources out there which help you save time and frustration, the Cardas cable site has lots and lots of papers on how to adjust your seat. Make sure that your seat height is equal to tweeter height and that your not too far inclined when your sitting as this will impact on ability to percieve stereo imaging if you use one the Cardas methods for seat placement.
Lowering the height of the tweeter - COST ** NOTHING **
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I'd heard about this on various forums and decided if there was any merit in this tweak. I measured the height of my ATC 50ASL's tweeter from the
ground and found it to be 104cm, these sit on atacama stands which are then decoupled from by 4 silicone pods which the speaker sits on. My ear-to-ground height is exactly 100cm. My first reaction was that this was not a bad match, 4cm is not that great a distance and then my 2nd thought was how do I make up the difference. The answer was simples!! I removed the silicone decoupler which saved me 10mm and cut 8 sections of 17mm MDF which I double up and then placed under my chair and hey presto a difference of 4 mm between my ears and the tweeter. I dont think my ears are good enough to be able to discern 4mm diferences.
The MDF was just a spare piece I found in the garage, the other half was pleased as the garage looked slightly tidier 8-)). I was worried about the effects of decoupling the speakers from the speaker stands but I could hear no discernable differences betwen having the speakers on the decoupling pads and with them just sitting directly onto the speaker stand. I also got the impression that the music was playing down to me as if I was having to "focus up" when listening to any record i spun. Now it seems as if I'm on a level par with the band
Equipment Placement
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Previously I had one Quadraspire equipment rack which held all my gear. This lived directly in the middle of my speakers, for quite some time I presumed that
this was having a negative effect of the soundstage. I decided to split the Quadrapsire in two, so now I have two racks which now live under the height of my forward firing speaker port and bass driver unit in my ATC speakers. Instantly I noticed that the sound stage appeared to open out and that the band were playing directly at me rather than it sounding as if someone was standing in front of me at a concert. The only problem with my current equipment placement is that its directly in front of a radiator which when switched on actually make things sound better. This may sound like bollocks but I think that I have heard this reported before, I welcome your comments on this! The only problem with the equipment being near the radiator is static and dust 8-(
Clean Your Room - COST NOTHING
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Clean your equipment and man cave at least once a week to stop excessive dust which will eventually get transferred onto your vinal and also your
cartridge tip. This should help limit surface noise on your vinyl.
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**AREAS THAT NEED TO BE WORKED ON**
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Surface Noise
Simbilance
Rumble Noise
Slight Bass bloom
In-toe Angle of Speakers
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** FURTHER UPGRADES **
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Room treatment
Vibration control - silicone bonding of the internal chasis
Paul Hynes SR5 power supply
Silver speaker cables
Silver power cables
Cartridge
Record cleaning Machine
Nice post matey, I am now selling Moth RCM's so may be able to help with the last bit, BTW any chance of some soborthane please? Fancy a dabble myself, can we swap for some mains bits and bobs?
I've made some very simple balanced silver interconnects bewteen my ATC amp and speakers. They cost the sum total of about £20, and were produced from a couple of old microphone cable and some teflon coated silver (9999) purity of fleabay for about £3 a foot. The cables are completely bare and have no protection of any substance apart from the teflon coating!! Well what can I say!! I'm stunned. The cables trumped a pair of £85 atlas Quadstar. I must admit that I think there isn't that much in it but I listened last night and could definitely hear more dynamic and micro detail from my current set up. This was definitely worth an investment in time and money. I'm going to now order some OHNO 99999 purity silver, and start experimenting even further with the interconnects and power cables!!!!! So I think I've learned 2 thing from last night.
1. A fully active ATC pre-amp and speaker system DOES sound better with silver even though ATC themselves recommend nothing more expensive than budget banjo copper.
2. A definitely get more microdetail and dynamics now that I've swithced the 1210 to a being completely silver wired system rather than a completely Cu system.
The experiment continues................. :mad:
One is supposed to sit on axis with the MID DOME, not the bloody tweeter....
All this and you still use an SCA2? That could be the log-jam if mine was anything to go by, as the entire time I had it (two years from memory), it sounded like a Naim preamp in dire need of a HighCap supply. When you've a few hundred spare, try a vintage Levinson ML28, which is balanced from input to output and sounded rather wonderful I remember at the time.
By the way, the Belden tinned-copper "banjo-wires" ATC recommend are actually quite good, if a little "safe" and treble monotonic sounding. Anything which sounds dramatically different to these should be viewed with extreme caution IMO. You have lifted the XLR pin 1 connection at the speaker end, haven't you, as this sits on the sonics as well if pin 1 is connected at both ends, despite ATC fitting a 47 Ohm resistor to the signal-earth connection in the speakers' amp packs to prevent ground/hum loops.
I also found that copious use of cable ferrites on the mains leads (or possibly use of Mark Grant mains leads today) helped bass reproduction. This was repeatable and three of these won't cost much more than a tenner.
By the way, you have hundreds of feet of COPPER in your voice coils and using proper balanced connections should dramatically minimise the need for exotic wire materials, especially as all the impedances are properly matched, unlike most single-ended phono connections around and about.
Lecture/rant over...
Thanks for the advice. Did you use your SCA2 with ATC ASL50's? What other pre-amps would your recommend, KRELL maybe?
Secondly Im not sure what you mean by " You have lifted the XLR pin 1 connection at the speaker end", can you expand a bit on this as this is something which I may need to do.
I did contemplate ferrites and only learned about them recently!! You mentioned using them on the speakers power leads, do think these would also help on the pre-amp power cables or interconnects from pre-amp to speakers?? Does it make any difference that I'm filtering this lot through an ISOTEK titan mains filtration system??
So many questions, hope you can answer one or two, thanks in advance. :eek: